My (failed) attempt to switch from google services to icloud

I have been using google services for many years but have primarily apple hardware (iphone, macbook, ipad, etc). However, at work I need to use a Windows machine and I also have a Windows gaming computer, so I need my services to be cross platform or at least have browser interfaces.

I liked the idea of having better integration with my web services and my apple hardware so I thought I'd set up all of the icloud services to see if the transition would work for me. What I found is that while apple services have come a long way, they have some dealbreakers for my particular use case that won't apply to everyone. Most of these problems come from the poor iCloud web interface. Here are the reasons I switched back to Google services, in no particular order:

1. The iCloud web interface animations are extremely slow and make the entire experience feel very laggy.

2. iCloud web interface has no threaded conversation view, which even on its own is a dealbreaker to me.

3. Reminders web interface has a character limit that doesn't exist on the "app" versions. Why?! Infuriating.

4. Can't change my iCloud primary email from gmail to icloud, so even if I wanted to switch from google to icloud I could never get rid of my google account.

5. It may have been bad timing with a service outage, but when I tried to use Messages, some of the test messages I sent between my iphone and my wife's didn't go through at all, or came through with a 15 minute lag. Not good.

6. Siri was useless for anything I tried to use it for. One of the main reasons I wanted to try to use Apple services was that Siri commands would integrate with the ios experience, especially in the car, but it just didn't work for me.

7. iCloud drive on Yosemite has no indication of when all of the files in a directory have been synced. If I drag a complex directory structure into iCloud drive I'm not going to want to drill down into the directory structure to figure out file-by-file which files have synced. This was a dealbreaker-level problem for me.

8. ios has no native way to view pdf files via iCloud Drive. WTF.

Apple has the unique position to be able to control hardware-software integration and has a ton of money in reserve, and it really baffles me that they don't spend some of that money securing better cloud service software engineers to provide cloud services. Anyways, I'm a big Apple fan and will continue to be but for now I'm back to Google services and Apple hardware, which is a position that I think many many people find themselves in to their chagrin.

I have been using google services for many years but have primarily apple hardware (iphone, macbook, ipad, etc). However, at work I need to use a Windows machine and I also have a Windows gaming computer, so I need my services to be cross platform or at least have browser interfaces.

I liked the idea of having better integration with my web services and my apple hardware so I thought I'd set up all of the icloud services to see if the transition would work for me. What I found is that while apple services have come a long way, they have some dealbreakers for my particular use case that won't apply to everyone. Most of these problems come from the poor iCloud web interface. Here are the reasons I switched back to Google services, in no particular order:

1. The iCloud web interface animations are extremely slow and make the entire experience feel very laggy.

2. iCloud web interface has no threaded conversation view, which even on its own is a dealbreaker to me.

3. Reminders web interface has a character limit that doesn't exist on the "app" versions. Why?! Infuriating.

4. Can't change my iCloud primary email from gmail to icloud, so even if I wanted to switch from google to icloud I could never get rid of my google account.

5. It may have been bad timing with a service outage, but when I tried to use Messages, some of the test messages I sent between my iphone and my wife's didn't go through at all, or came through with a 15 minute lag. Not good.

6. Siri was useless for anything I tried to use it for. One of the main reasons I wanted to try to use Apple services was that Siri commands would integrate with the ios experience, especially in the car, but it just didn't work for me.

7. iCloud drive on Yosemite has no indication of when all of the files in a directory have been synced. If I drag a complex directory structure into iCloud drive I'm not going to want to drill down into the directory structure to figure out file-by-file which files have synced. This was a dealbreaker-level problem for me.

8. ios has no native way to view pdf files via iCloud Drive. WTF.

Apple has the unique position to be able to control hardware-software integration and has a ton of money in reserve, and it really baffles me that they don't spend some of that money securing better cloud service software engineers to provide cloud services. Anyways, I'm a big Apple fan and will continue to be but for now I'm back to Google services and Apple hardware, which is a position that I think many many people find themselves in to their chagrin.

This is a good write up and is indicative of many of the headaches people have merging software/services/hardware as seamlessly as Apple claims. Real world experience just doesn't match up to hype, when it comes to real world, daily use - from people that care about quality experiences.

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